Feature Stories

Recent discussions of methods by which biomass—grasses, trees, and other vegetation—could be turned into fuel makes a lot of sense in theory. Plant matter is composed of energy-intensive carbohydrates, but even now scientists still don't have the perfect solution for converting plant sugars into combustible fuels.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin joined officials from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago at a groundbreaking event Friday, June 3, for a new Energy Sciences Building at Argonne.

Paul Fenter, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, has been named the next recipient of the American Crystallographic Association's Bertram E. Warren Award, which recognizes contributions to the physics of solids through the use of diffraction-based techniques.

Kawtar Hafidi of Argonne National Laboratory studies the interactions of quarks, the fundamental constituents of ordinary matter, enabling a deeper insight into particles and forces that build our universe; she has been named this year's annual Innovator Award winner by the Chicago chapter of the Association for Women in Science.

CEES is one of three Argonne-led Energy Frontier Research Centers that were established in 2009 thanks to a special block grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that sought to establish five-year interdisciplinary programs focused around discrete scientific challenges.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Argonne National Laboratory is working in overdrive to develop advanced energy storage technologies to aid the growth of a nascent U.S. battery manufacturing industry, help transition the U.S. automotive fleet to one dominated by plug-in hybrid and electric passenger vehicles, and enable greater use of renewable energy technologies.

Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, have been the subject of decades of debate over exactly how they should be classified. While they reproduce and share DNA with their bacterial cousins, they are the only phylum of bacteria that can photosynthesize like plants.

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University have identified a new biological pathway by which plutonium finds its way into mammalian cells. The researchers learned that, to get into cells, plutonium acts like a "Trojan horse," duping a special membrane protein that is typically responsible for taking up iron.